Overcast and damp this early Friday on California’s north coast with a chance of some ‘drizzle‘ this morning, maybe even some ‘showers‘ this afternoon, but no real ‘rain‘ forecast until Monday.
Predicting nature, though, even with way-nerd-like technology, is dicey at best.

Especially with nature freaking out about the heat. Most-particularly, naturally frozen water reacts quickly and sometimes most-weirdly to any application of warmth — ice can become wildly irrational.
Sea-level rise rises to the occasion. This morning, via Climate News Network:

‘Satellite observations show that sea level rise may have been underestimated, and that annual rises are increasing…The increase of around 3.1mm per year since 1993 indicates a marked rise in the average sea level when compared to previously recorded values, which show a sea level rise of between 1mm and 2mm per year in the 20th century.’

The observations further pick at the scab:

The evidence is growing from a number of recent studies of the ice caps that sea level rise is accelerating, posing a threat to many of the world’s largest and most wealthy cities — most of which are also important ports.
Many of these in the developing world have little or no protection against rising sea levels.
Some in Europe — such as London and Rotterdam — already have flood barriers to protect areas below high tide or storm surge level, but these will need to be replaced and raised in the next 30 years.
Delta areas in Egypt, Vietnam, Bangladesh and China – vital to each of the nation’s food supply – are already losing land to the sea.
…
Research published since the IPCC estimates were made show that both icecaps will be large net contributors to sea level rise, and possibly much quicker than previously thought.
This lends credibility to the report last week that European coastal cities are not sufficiently prepared for the threats that climate change poses.
The report — titled Underfunded, Unprepared, Underwater? Cities at Risk — is by the E3G non-governmental organisation, and it says governments across the European Union are leaving their major cities exposed to danger from climate change, including floods, heat waves and sea level rise.

And the whole scenario is dipped in idiocy, like in Florida, where flooding will be huge, state officials can’t even say the words, ‘climate change’ — we be fucked.

Up here in northern California, at least some of us are attending to bad business. Our own Humboldt Bay and lying about regions are high on the rise of melting ice water, along with the natural flow of the oceans.
From the local Times-Standard last November with a good overall view of our own predicament with sea-level rise.
Noteworthy:

While those are the “high-end” predictions, Arcata-based environmental planner Aldaron Laird of Trinity Associates said that “all of the observations of actual tide changes and sea level changes have been higher and greater than what the models have shown we should expect.”
Laird recently completed a “walkabout” inventory and mapping project of the entire 102-mile shoreline of Humboldt Bay as part of a project funded by the Coastal Conservancy.
“The main thing we learned from going out and surveying and mapping the shoreline, which had never been done before, was that we really had no idea that we’ve been living on borrowed time this past 100 years,” Laird said.
“People in the 1890s through 1910 diked off essentially 30 percent of the bay and ‘reclaimed’ it for agriculture, but the time has come due and the bay is ready to take all that land back.”

All of shit is getting ready to be taken back. Yet Americans appear to be pretty-well grounded in opinion of climate change at least according to Stanford University professor Jon Krosnick, who has been involved with polling on the subject.
From The Desert Sun:

“On this particular issue, America is remarkably one-sided,” said Krosnick, a professor of psychology, communication and political science.
“What we’ve found is between two thirds and three quarters of Americans have endorsed the idea that the planet has been warming over the last hundred years, that it’s due at least partly to human activity, that it poses a threat to future generations, and that the federal government in particular should take actions to reduce the amount of warming that occurs in the future and to support preparation for the effects.”
…
“Americans don’t seem to be flitting around unstably from one moment to the next.
“They seem remarkably grounded in their opinions, and remarkably on one side in a way that’s unprecedented in contemporary American politics,” Krosnick said.
“There is very little else in the political arena that Americans agree on as much, other than, let’s say, their disapproval of Congress these days.
“So this is an unusual case in which there is a remarkable consensus and a strong signal being sent from the public to government.”

And this the biggest problem beyond actual global warming:

“The pressure on government is quite substantial.
“And to the degree that we watch government policy move in the direction of what the public asks for, that will be evidence of effective representation,” Krosnick said.
“If we do not see that movement happen, it raises a very interesting question about what other forces are operating and may be at work.”

Underline my emphasis. ‘Other forces’ — not only are assholes, but also species terminators.

(Illustration above found here).